John Updike

"Bech at Bay and Before"

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October 6, 2000 3:32AM (UTC)

From Harvard to a staff position on The New Yorker, John Updike turned his brainy pedigree into a successful career as a novelist, essayist and critic. His novels "Rabbit, Run" (1960), "Couples" (1978) and Pulitzer winner "Rabbit is Rich" (1981) exemplify his sophisticated take on contemporary middle-class tragedy. One of contemporary fiction's most prolific writers, Updike has also written numerous short stories and poems, as well as engineered a group-written mystery story on the Internet.

"Bech at Bay and Before," his 49th book, chronicles the varied literary and personal life of Henry Bech, a New York writer, from Vietnam through the sagging end of the Seventies, and up into the post-Gutenbergian world of the Nineties.

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Listen to an excerpt from "Bech at Bay and Before," (Random House Audio) read by actor Ron Rifkin.